Page 56

I swim closer until there is no chance he can mistake who he is seeing. “Don’t kill him. You’ve already won.”

The killing tentacle lowers, although the others remain firmly around Lotan. One reaches toward me instead and stops at the edge of the ward, close enough that I can see every scar crossing the dark skin.

“Valerie, what are you doing out here?” His voice reaches me through Maren’s magic, deeper and rougher than it ever sounds in his humanoid form.

“I came for you.” I move closer, keeping my attention on Sigurd rather than the battered leviathan beneath him. “Look at me.”

His head turns fully toward me, but the tension in his body does not ease. Every tentacle remains drawn tight, and I can still feel how close he is to finishing what he started.

“He challenged my claim,” Sigurd says. “He came into my home and offered to take you from me.”

“I know what he offered.” I swim closer until the thin ward around me almost brushes the tentacle beside me. “I was going to say no.”

The words reach him in a way nothing else has.

His body goes still, not with the terrible focus of the fight but with something quieter. The tentacle nearest me loosens first.

“I don’t want Lotan, and I don’t want him breaking the claim.” My throat tightens, but the rest comes easily now that I finally have the chance to say it. “I love you, Sigurd. I would have chosen you in the Great Hall if you had given me another ten seconds.”

Some of the pressure leaves the tentacles holding Lotan down. The leviathan draws a rough breath beneath him, but Sigurd barely seems to notice.

“I thought you might want what he offered.” The words come slowly, stripped of the rage that brought him out here. “Saltweather safe. The surface returned to you. A way out of something you never asked me to begin.”

“I know.” I press my palm against the ward where his tentacle waits on the other side. “You were wrong.”

For several seconds, we stay like that with Lotan still pinned between us, and the fortress watching from behind the glass. The current carries the last of the disturbed silt across the trench, and Sigurd’s tentacle settles carefully against my hand without putting pressure on the magic.

“I came out here because I knew you would stop for me,” I tell him. “So stop.”

The last of the violence leaves him slowly. His weight shifts away from Lotan, and the tentacles around the leviathan begin to loosen until only one remains across his body.

Lotan drags in another breath and lifts his head from the rock. He does not try to provoke Sigurd again.

I keep my attention on the kraken in front of me. “Let him go.”

Sigurd hesitates long enough that I know exactly how much the request costs him. Then the final tentacle unwinds.

Lotan doesn’t waste the opportunity. He coils backward, putting several lengths of water between himself and Sigurd before turning back toward us. His scales are torn along one side. Blood still trails from the wound at his neck, but he can move under his own power.

For the first time since I reached them, I look directly at him.

“The djinn’s basin will be sufficient once the work is finished,” Lotan says. There is nothing triumphant left in his voice, only exhaustion and a very healthy awareness of Sigurd behind me. “Saltweather will remain untouched.”

I nod once. “Then finish the details with Rakan.”

Lotan’s gaze shifts briefly toward Sigurd. Whatever he sees convinces him not to prolong the conversation. He turns and disappears into the dark water beyond the fortress.

I barely watch him leave. Sigurd is still in front of me.

Only now that the fight is over do I notice the cuts along the tentacle nearest me and the scrape running across one side of his head. They are minor compared with what he did to Lotan, but the sight pulls me closer anyway.

“You should be inside the fortress,” he says. His attention moves over me as if he expects to find some injury Maren’s spell has hidden from him. “That ward will not hold indefinitely at this depth.”

“I know.” I rest my palm against the thin magic separating us. “But I meant everything I said.”

Sigurd stays very still, and for once he does not answer with another warning. The tentacle opposite my hand curves carefully against the ward, following the shape of my palm without actually touching it.

“I would have let you go,” he says after a while. “If that was what you chose.”